News story for sale or rent

After a year of following the U.S. presidential election, we at Turpin Laboratories have pretty much grown tired of being shocked and indignant. But we’re still not above “piling on” when the media spotlight catches someone in an ethical grey area.

Here you can find a good story by CBC Nova Scotia on the cost to taxpayers of promoting the annual gift of a large fir tree to Boston in 2015.

Here, three days later, you can find the Halifax Examiner’s Tim Bousquet noticing that part of the cost was $25,000 to obtain news coverage of the event from CTV.

No doubt CTV will say that it’s a sponsorship arrangement, not the sale of news coverage; that they are proud to be supporting such an important part of Nova Scotia’s friendship with Boston; that Bousquet is wilfully misinterpreting the contract; that Bousquet is taking it out of context; that CTV would be covering the event in any case and, further, blah, blah, blah.

As noted at the top, at T-Labs, we’re like, whatever.

You can decide for yourself by clicking on the link below. If you’re pressed for time, go straight to Page 7.